When a child doesn’t get his or her own way the common response to the parent is, “You don’t love me.” Of course this isn’t true. The parent’s love hasn’t changed. It’s just that at that moment their love is expressing itself differently than how the child wants it.

God’s love is like that. Sometimes he expresses it in ways that we don’t like. For instance, some experience God’s love in a deeper more meaningful way than others. The fact that God’s special love is selective doesn’t sit right with us. But God’s love has never been thrown around at random. God’s love has always been directed primarily at a particular group of people.

Related Text Illustrations

Conrad Hyers in his book, And God Created Laughter tells a of an 8 year old girl who wrote to Abraham Lincoln, who was then running for President suggesting that he grow a beard. In her opinion, Lincoln would stand a better chance of election if he grew one to hide the homeliness of his face.
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Joni Eareckson Tada, who was paralyzed from the neck down while still a teenager, wrote, "You don’t have to be alone in your hurt! Comfort is yours. Joy is an option. And it’s all been made possible by your Savior. He went without comfort so you might have it. He postponed joy so you
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One day C. H. Spurgeon was walking through the English countryside with a friend. As they strolled along, the evangelist noticed a barn with a weather vane on its roof. At the top of the vane were these words: GOD IS LOVE.
Spurgeon remarked to his companion that he thought this was a rather
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Someone tells about a man who pulled up to a red light and saw a truck towing a trailer with many sheep inside. The man rolled down his window and yelled to the truck driver, "You shepherds don’t move your sheep around like you used to."
To which the truck driver replied, "I’m not a
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There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me. There is,
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Those who are outside the people of God are in rebellion against Him and are therefore spiritually dead. But God makes them a free offer to bring them back to life. All that’s needed to receive all of the bounty that God offers is to believe his promise,